Subrato Bagchi talks about size

by Santosh

Now, the second point was about size being a mindset, and not being a matter of your physical size. I’ll give you two examples. Look at Singapore. It takes two-and-a-half hours to enter Singapore from one end and get out at the other end. That’s the size of the country. Look at Israel. Countries like Singapore, or Israel, or Finland, are world leaders in many ways. These are developed countries. These countries are at the top-end of GDP. But they are so tiny. They’re microscopic when you compare them to countries like India or Pakistan. Many of the African countries are significantly larger.

In today’s world, physical size does not guarantee success. What is important is mental size. Nokia was created out of Finland. Singapore’s GDP is way bigger than the GDP of India, and … the population of Singapore is half the population of Bangalore.

It’s very important to understand this because I think entrepreneurs suffer from an inferiority complex. They think that the world is going to favor size. No, today’s world is not about size, it is about an idea. If you have the right idea, you can take on size. So don’t be scared of size. You know, size gives you a sense of the power of being convincing, and entrepreneurship is about non-convincing. I keep saying that in a world full of monochromatic tadpoles, if you are fluorescent it does not matter what size tadpole you are.